The run
- Network
- Springbok Radio
- Years active
- 1968–1983
- Surviving broadcasts
- 42
- Genre
- detective
SQUAD CARS WRITERS: ADRIAN STEED, BEV PIERCE, ANTHONY FRIDJON, LOUIS IFE, COLIN FISH PRODUCER: COLIN FISH, LOUIS IFE DIRECTOR: DAVID GOODEN STUDIO: SONOVISION STUDIOS, JOHANNESBURG FOR SPRINGBOK RADIO STARRING: GORDON MULHOLLAND, HAL ORLANDINI, DIANE APPLEBY, ANNABEL LINDER DIANE STUART, DANA NIEHAUS, GRAHAM ARMITAGE, NIC DE JAGGER TONY JAY, PATRICK MYNHARDT, GABRIEL BAYMAN, ANTHONY FRIDJON LOUIS IFE, COLIN FISH, CLIVE SCOTT, DALE CUTTS, MICHAEL MAYER MEL MILLER, TROMP TERRE'BLANCHE, BRIAN O'SHAUGNESSY & others. NARRATION: HUGH ROUSE , ADRIAN STEED , MALCOLM GOODING FIRST EPISODE B/C: 29/06/1968 Probably one of the most popular radio programmes ever broadcast in South Africa. Week by week a Public-domain transfers from the Internet Archive.
Source collection
Internet Archive audio collections
Rights
Public domain — no renewed US copyright
Cataloguing
Air dates and notes from the Archive item record
The shape of the run
What survives, year by year
11 dated broadcasts across 59 years on the air, with 57 years where nothing is known to survive. Brightness is transfer quality; empty cells are months lost to time.
Episodes
Start here
Listen to the run in order
Restored broadcasts from 2025, in original transmission order.
- 1. Sign Off · 21 Oct 2025
- 2. Dead Air · 28 Oct 2025
- 3. The Long Silence · 4 Nov 2025
Dead Air
4 Aug 2026 · 52 min
Short, complete and unexpectedly devastating.
Sign Off
28 Jul 2026 · 15 min
The episode listeners keep sending to people who never listen to podcasts.
The Case of the Missing Hour
21 Jul 2026 · 30 min
A quiet beginning that turns, halfway through, into something else entirely.
Night Broadcast
14 Jul 2026 · 45 min
The one everybody argues about.
The Last Train Out
7 Jul 2026 · 1h 0m
Short, complete and unexpectedly devastating.
Signal at Midnight
30 Jun 2026 · 23 min
The episode listeners keep sending to people who never listen to podcasts.
A Room Above the Street
23 Jun 2026 · 38 min
A quiet beginning that turns, halfway through, into something else entirely.
The Long Silence
16 Jun 2026 · 53 min
Three interviews, one archive reel, and a question nobody wanted asked.
Same seasons
detective on the air then
Series in the same genre whose runs overlapped this one.
What it became
The private eye at the microphone
First-person narration, a case that walks in the door, and a city that talks back. Marlowe, Sam Spade and Johnny Dollar turned detection into a listening form.
Lineage is written by our editors, not inferred from listening data.
Descendants
Working in the tradition of Squad Cars
Modern series carrying this form forward.
If you liked this
More to explore
Chosen by the same editors.
